


Thicker than Water

by sevenofspade



Category: Batgirl (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 06:50:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13048746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: Steph's day goes from bad to worse.





	Thicker than Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vantas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vantas/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this. 
> 
> The title comes from the saying "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb".

Steph dreamed of ravens, feathers bright in the moonlight, and of black flowers, blooming in the dark. It was a very goth sort of dream, which struck her as odd, given that she'd never been a goth sort of person.

She woke up hungry.

The hunger didn't stop as she ate breakfast. If anything, it deepened, began digging its way throughout her torso, like a black hole had taken residence in her stomach. Not even the sight of her dad's weirdo plant did anything for it. 

By the time she made her way to school, she was pale and shaking. The devouring hunger had not faded, but been eclipsed by the way her joints hurt. She'd felt like this before, as a child, on nights her bones had grown too big for her, the summer she'd grown three inches in half as many months. 

She bought a pack of crisps -- the cheapest thing in the vending machine -- in an attempt to at least appease the hunger, but everything tasted of blood and ashes as the black hole spread past her shoulders and hips.

She sat, right there in the middle of the hallway.

She tried to breathe. For one terrifying moment, she found that she couldn't. Then someone grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

It was a girl about her own age that Steph had never seen. She said, "Come with me."

Steph followed, almost despite herself.

She thought the girl would take her to the infirmary, but she didn't. Steph had a bad feeling by the time they were off the school-grounds, hastily confirmed when the girl pulled a knife on her.

"What the fuck?" Steph shouted. 

" Who bit you?" the girl asked. This was the last question Steph expected. Which was saying a lot, since she wasn't expecting any questions after _getting a knife pulled on her_. That was usually a one-way ticket to Deadtown, population: You.

"What the fuck," Steph repeated, less of a question than a general statement of confusion this time.

"You're a vampire. Yesterday you weren't," the girl said like that (a) made sense and (b) explained anything. " Who bit you?"

"Nobody bit me, what the fuck!" Steph pulled down the collar of her shirt to expose her completely pristine, markless neck.

The girl grabbed her shirt and pulled it further down, exposing her collarbone. Next, she grabbed Steph's wrists and examined those.

"But you're a vampire," she said.

"News to me," Steph said. She carefully didn't think about the hunger.

The girl poked the pad of her thumb to the blood. Every fibre of Steph's being focused on that spot. It was the only thing that existed in the universe. The girl had an array of dotted scar around it and the wall behind Steph was crumpling like paper in her claws.

Wait. Claws? Since when did she have claws?

Steph brought up her hands and stared at them in shock. The hunger, the claws, the blood... The girl was right. Steph was a vampire.

She screamed.

For the longest time, she didn't stop screaming.

When she finished screaming, the girl had put away the knife. She was looking at Steph like she was riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a purple hoodie.

"You can't be a vampire if you're not willingly bitten," the girl said.

"I am not willing!" Steph shouted.

"I'm Cassandra," the girl said. She touched Steph's shoulder. "I believe you. We must figure this out. What do you remember?"

"Weird dreams," Steph said. Cass nodded for her to go on, so Steph continued, "I don't know, yesterday was a normal day. Except for dad, urgh. Fuck that guy."

"Your father?" Cass had an eyebrow raised.

"He's a douchebag. He came home yesterday." Seeing Cass' face, Steph hastened to add, "He's a douchebag, but he's a human douchebag."

Cass shrugged. "Where do you live?"

Remembering that this was the girl who had very recently had a knife to her throat, Steph lead her home. Maybe Cass would put a knife to her douchebag dad's throat. That'd be nice.

It was.

"Vampires," Cass said. "Where?"

Steph had thought she'd handled her conversation with Cass' knife badly, but that was nothing compared to how her dad did. At least Steph hadn't needed a change of clothes.

The fact remained, however, that Steph's dad knew nothing. In the corner, the bizarro plant was listless. The night before it'd looked like a black rose growing on an orchid. Even this morning, though it'd already began to smell of rot, it'd still looked like a flower of some sort. Now it was what happened to vampire blood after it'd been left in the dark too long -- Steph wasn't going to ask how she knew that -- a dark ooze that was almost animate and malevolent.

It called to her. No. It called to the hunger within her.

"What's that?" She asked the question, already half knowing the answer. She was not disappointed. Her douchebag dad had used her as someone else's test subject.

Whoever Dr Isley was, they were about to receive a visit from a pissed off vampire and a vampire hunter who looked like the wrath of God incarnate.

Dr Isley was a tall, red-headed woman with skin so pale it was green around the edges. On the edge of her desk were a series of the potted plant Steph's douchebag dad had brought home in increasing size. The smallest was the size of a child's fist, the tallest was off the desk and in the corner, looming across the room like something out of Little Shop of Horrors.

Steph put herself as much between the plants and Cass as possible.

She had no doubt Cass could stab the fuck out of those plants, but she had no idea how effective that would be. Steph hadn't touched the plant, just breathed the spores, and now she was a vampire, so. Probably not that effective with the stabbing.

Dr Isley took one look at Steph and said, "You must be Stephanie. I see Arthur is as good as his word."

Steph snorted. 'Good' and her father's name didn't belong in the same sentence.

Cass asked the question. "Why?"

"Human beings are the main threat to plants and the environment," Dr Isley said. She snarled and ivy leaves began to sprout beneath her skin.

Dr Isley stood. The plants in the room turned towards her like she was the sun. "Vampires have no need to feed on anything without blood." She stroked the leaves of the nearest plant; it began blooming like it was on steroids. "And they live forever. perhaps if they live forever they will begin caring about what happens to the planet."

She was shouting, at the end. The plants followed her lead by spraying spores throughout the office.

Steph grabbed Cass, slapped her hand over Cass' nose and mouth before she could breathe and jumped out the window. It would have been a good plan, except for one teeny, tiny detail.

The office was on the 37th floor.

They fell. Steph tried to wrap herself around Cass to protect her from the ground. Her mistake, her responsibility. They were probably both going to die anyway, but at least Steph would have tried and Cass would die human.

Steph closed her eyes and braced for impact.

There was a sound like the beating of great wings, no impact and claws digging in her shoulders. Steph opened her eyes. A giant bat looked back at her. Steph squinted. No, that was someone -- a girl -- dressed as a bat, with sharp claws and bat wings. Was she a vampire? Did that mean Steph could have wings too? Because that'd be awesome.

"Quiet," the bat-girl said. 

She landed on a nearby roof, dropping Steph seconds before. Steph cushioned Cass' fall and sprang to her feet. Somehow Cass was faster and had her knife out before she was on her feet.

"You're human," Cass said. How she knew Steph had no idea, but now that Cass had said it, Steph could tell she was right. It wasn't even that the wings were mechanical or that the claws were part of the gloves. It was... It was the hunger inside Steph, calling for her to hunt the girl down like prey.

The bat-girl rose her mask just enough to show a fangless mouth and a few wisps of red hair. "I'm Batgirl. I've been tracking Poison Ivy for months now."

Poison Ivy had to be Dr Isley, Steph figured.

"You just blew the entire operation out of the water," Batgirl said. "She'll be in Panama by morning."

"My father is in Panama," Cass said. "She will not escape him."

Batgirl shrugged. "Your father said the same thing about you. He said he made you the perfect vampire hunter."

"She is not a vampire," Cass said. "She is something... _new_."

"But she can make vampires," Steph said. "How many of those plants does she have?"

"Too many," Cass said.

Batgirl blew out a breath through her teeth. "We're going to have to track down each one."

"We?" Steph asked.

"We," Cass replied.


End file.
